UNITED KINGDOM: British Airways May Commence Some Flights Sunday 28th May 2017

Tens of thousands of British Airways' customers were left stranded on Saturday after the airline was forced to cancel all of its scheduled flights from London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports due to a computer breakdown.

We have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide the airline said in a statement.

At first, the airline announced that it was canceling all flights until 6.00 pm (1700 GMT) from Heathrow and Gatwick today, a spokesman said.

But later, it admitted the disruption would last for the rest of the day.

On its website, BA said it expected London-bound long-haul flights to land as scheduled on Sunday, but that thousands of travelers from the two airports may continue to face delays due to staff and aircraft being in the wrong location.

The company later said it was aiming to operate a near normal schedule at Gatwick and the majority of services from Heathrow on Sunday.

In a video message to affected customers, BA's Chairman and CEO Alex Cruz said the airline would make arrangements to get customers on their way as soon as we possibly can.

Some British media speculated the system failure was the result of a cyberattack but BA rejected that claim.

The airline said it had found no evidence that it's a cyberattack, with Britain still recovering from a the Manchester attack that crippled key infrastructure earlier this month.

The system failure is causing massive delays with planes stuck on runways, and the terminals at London's two major airports getting extremely crowded.

On Sunday, the airline said that it would aim to resume flights from Gatwick as well as the "majority" of services from Heathrow.
It also said it would refund those who suffered cancellations and no longer wanted to fly to and from the affected airports.

Although some of the IT systems have returned, there will be some knock-on disruption to our schedules as aircraft and crews are out of position around the world, the airline said in a statement on its Facebook page Sunday.

It asked travelers not to go to Gatwick or Heathrow unless they are confirmed for travel.

We are repositioning some aircraft during the night to enable us to operate as much of our schedule as possible throughout Sunday, the airline said.

At this stage we are aiming to operate a near normal schedule of flights from Gatwick and the majority of our Heathrow services.

British Airways has extended its flexible booking policy and says customers can rebook their flights to travel up to and including June 10.

On Saturday, British Airways CEO Alex Cruz posted a video on Twitter in which he said he believed the cause of the problem to be a power supply issue.

He also rejected any notion that the airline had been the subject of a cyberattack.

The airline had initially canceled only flights before 1 p.m. ET (6 p.m. BST) at Heathrow and Gatwick.

Travelers in the United Kingdom were already reporting disruptions, including baggage and flight delays, when the airline reported serious computer problems around midday Saturday.

A Nigerian passenger visiting his wife in the United Kingdom on their wedding anniversary, said his plane sat on the tarmac at Heathrow for about four hours after landing. The plane's entertainment system and air conditioning were operating, and free snacks and drinks were served.

Most travelers seemed resigned, he said, though others appeared stressed and some children were crying.

Most people were being rebooked on Sunday flights, he said, but by then, he'd already have missed his match.

BA staff were slow on announcements and updates, and were bringing out cordons and bottles of water to manage queues.

They seemed incapable of doing anything else, despite their best intentions, due to the system outage. They were totally crippled.

Passengers at London's Heathrow Airport reported flight delays and long queues at check-in counters.

BA said the crash also affected its website, mobile app and call centers and told passengers not to travel to the two airports.

Meanwhile, some frustrated customers took to Twitter to voice their complaints.

Still on the tarmac at Leeds. #Britishairways reckon Heathrow is so backed up we can't set off. No way we'll make our Vegas flight, one passenger wrote on Twitter.

The disruption comes at the start of a three-day weekend in Britain.

London's Heathrow Airport, one of the world's busiest, said it was working with BA.

Passenger Roshni Burt, who was flying from Heathrow to Bahrain with her young son, said there was no news about when her flight would depart.

When we left the check-in area there were angry people, people getting frustrated that their flights were coming up or near to departure, people getting turned away with BA staff basically saying, If you've not checked in online, you've missed your flight, she said.

Computer glitches and outages have plagued BA and other airlines in before.

In September, British Airways said a computer problem in its check-in systems caused delays and long lines at numerous airports.

Delta was hit by a global computer outage one month earlier that caused days of travel chaos, including about 2,000 flight cancellations.

And in July, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights following a system failure.

UNITED KINGDOM: More Chinese Tourists Arrive In The UK

Despite the current political situation in the UK, tourism is one of the strongest sectors of the UK’s economy. Of course, we can’t discuss tourism without talking about Chinese tourists.

With over 120 million Chinese tourists traveling abroad, the Chinese outbound market is the biggest in the world. Not only are they numerous, they are also high spenders.

The Chinese tourism market alone is worth more than US$60m with each Chinese traveller spend on average US$4,160 on one trip.

What about Chinese visitors in the UK? Well, according to VisitBritain, the national organization in charge of promoting the UK abroad (the official tourism organization), the number of Chinese visitors going to the UK skyrocketed by almost 40% during the first three-quarters of 2015.

The volume of Chinese tourists totalled 200,000 at the end of last year. In terms of spending, Chinese visitors spent a total of US$580m last year accounting for a growth of 4% compared to 2014. Finally, China represents one-fourth of the total tourist spending in the UK!

Forecasts are pretty optimist for the UK. VisitBritain is expecting Chinese visitors to spend double the current amount by 2020 and reach the £1billion mark.

The UK is gaining popularity among Chinese tourists but it isn’t without effort. Chinese visitors have to face issues such as a different currency from most of the other European countries, visa requirements and so on. With the UK leaving the European Union the pound sterling has decreased slightly in value.

This may help in boosting export as well as inbound tourism. However, most Chinese tourists will naturally go to the capital, London. Some other big cities in the UK can and want to benefit from this flow of Chinese tourists who love to spend.

Greater Manchester wants to do just that. Chinese visitors flying from Beijing can now enjoy a new flight offered by Hainan Airlines ( A Chinese local airline) travelling directly to Manchester.

The number of flights is not yet huge but this route will be operational four times a week and reflects a growing demand for UK travel outside of London.

According to official UK tourism data, this new flight between Beijing and Manchester will allow the city to attract over 20,000 Chinese visitors traveling for either business or leisure every year.

This is expected to bring generate a revenue of £250m for the UK economy by 2026.

Why do Chinese tourists want to go to Manchester instead of London for example? They are mainly drawn by the famous football teams who have attracted millions of supporters in China, the prestigious universities, and it’s shopping experience.

In order to capitalize the arrival of Chinese tourists to Manchester, Visit Britain decided to create a specific training program for any tourism figures and any businesses that will be interacting with Chinese visitors (shopping stores, service providers and so on).

This is called the ‘China Welcome Training’ and is part of the Great China Welcome Charter Mark certified by the COTRI (China Outbound Tourism Research Institute). It will be run and delivered by the reputable Capela Training.

This training will help businesses learn more about the Chinese culture, market, needs, customs, traditions, behavior as well as digital marketing practices.

For the tourism director of Marketing Manchester; “China is a rich and complex country and this training will give tourism organizations an insight into how to appeal to tourists and business travelers.

I encourage as many organizations as possible to sign up so we can make Manchester the most China-friendly city in the UK.”

Talking about digital marketing, Manchester could attract even more Chinese tourists if it focuses more on digital marketing just like Visit Britain did for the whole national tourism strategy to reach the Chinese market.

From social media to using opinion leaders, going digital in China is the way to go and Visit Britain understood this well.

With over 660 million Chinese internet users, China is one of the biggest online communities. It is estimated that 90% of Chinese netizens use their mobile phone to access the Internet and own at least one account on a social media platform.

The main Chinese social media platforms are WeiBo, WeChat, QQ and Ren Ren. WeChat is an instant messaging mobile app developed by Tencent (Creator of QQ). It has more than 690 million active users worldwide and China is the main market.

WeiBo, with more than 222 million active users is a Twitter-like platform, the name literally translates as micro-blogging.

New Zealand partnered with a famous Chinese artist named Huang Lei. He is an actor, teacher, producer and screenwriter and has more than 40 million followers on Weibo.

The collaboration with New Zealand started with the TV show called: “Dad, Where are we going” in its second season. Several places in New Zealand were pictured in several episodes giving more visibility to the country.

The last time he went to NZ was in 2015 with his wife and 2 daughters.

They were sponsored by Tourism New Zealand and other media platforms. Their trip draws a lot of attention on Chinese social media and generated more than US$27 million of equivalent advertising material as well as over 1,600 publications on various media platforms.

Manchester could also use the Visit Britain strategy on WeChat and Weibo by engaging with their followers. Visit Britain launched a marketing campaign on both platforms asking their fans to choose a Chinese name for the main attractions in London.

This worked quite well and they now have about 620,000 followers on Weibo.